A Jigsaw Elegy
by Distempered
Summary: Draco doesn't know how to mourn, and Ginny wants desperately to show him how, but he simply won't let her all the way in.  Written for the dgficexchange 2006, way, way preDH, and now completely AU.


**Disclaimer and Note:** The characters herein depicted do not belong to me. They belong to J.K. Rowling, and no infringement is intended. This was written for the 2006 winter Draco and Ginny LJ fic exchange. Written far, far pre-DH so no spoilers and totally AU.**  
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**A JIGSAW ELEGY**

There was something she had always liked about the oboe. Its melody was melancholic, forlorn, and plaintive, no matter the occasion or temperament of its player. It was an instrument of sadness and isolation, and since the war's end, it always managed to perfectly capture the intense desperation of her situation.

She had learnt to play the instrument during her final year at Hogwarts. By some cruel joke or twist of fate, the powers that were had deemed it appropriate, necessary even, for all those who were yet to come of age to finish their magical educations. In accordance with her mother's wishes, compounded by guilt that her father would have wanted it that way, Ginny returned to the old castle in Scotland to labour in apathy to complete her N.E.W.T. examinations. Her only consolations during the long and pointless year were the letters from him and her oboe, of course.

Truly, after one had committed murder, knowing precise runic translations and the difference between Fulbert the Fearful and Amycus the Afraid seemed trivial, if not downright laughable. (Though, it amazed Ginny sometimes how easily they forgot that killing Death Eaters was still murder.)

She was proficient at her instrument, though not exceptionally talented, but she absolutely loved the way the music sliced through the dead air when she played. She felt that it made her stand out amongst her peers, though admittedly she stood out boldly enough already. None of them could forget that she was Ginny Weasley - a killer, a soldier, a hero. Yes, they whispered to themselves when they thought that no one could hear, she is Ginny Weasley, who had faced down Death Eaters, who had stood at the side of the Boy Who Still Lived and had won.

Ginny only wanted to be remembered as a musician.

--- ---- ---- ---- ---

"Oh, how terrible." The words betrayed an indifference Ginny had never before thought her mother capable of, but really they had all changed since the war's end, and Molly Weasley was no exception.

"What's terrible?" she asked, picking up a plate.

Molly barely looked up from the morning's _Daily Prophet_. "Narcissa Malfoy was killed last night." And with an exasperated sigh, the Weasley matron cast aside the paper and shuffled over to clean up the shards of glass left behind in her youngest's haste to Disapparate. The ringing of the crash on the air was the last she'd hear of Ginny for days.

--- ---- ---- ---- ---

It wasn't all that surprising, considering. Many strange couples had emerged in the aftermath of the second war (heated kisses stolen in moments of relative peace - unbreakable bonds forged as they watched one another become killers - mutual life-debts owed). Certainly, the Malfoy heir and the youngest Weasley weren't so very different from those others; their story wasn't as interesting as it was made out to be. It should have all been so very ordinary.

They blamed Harlan Williams.

The Death Eater was full of the nameless, faceless obscurity that made up the lower ranks of Voldemort's army. He was disposable, and he knew it, which only made him work harder to garner his master's respect, though he would never, ever gain it. He only distinguished himself through his death, by the hand of both Ginny and Draco.

They stood over his smoking body, Draco in his Death Eaters' robes and mask and Ginny in her school clothes, staring in disbelief at their first kill. It didn't matter that they had been aiming for one another or that neither had cast the killing curse; they had killed, together.

Draco took down his hood and removed his mask. Ginny undid her ponytail and shook out her wild, red hair.

They looked at one another, contemplatively. "I should kill you," he said.

"You should," she replied, "but you won't."

"No," he rejoined, "no, I won't."

"Because you're not a killer." She stepped closer to him, staring up into his cold, grey eyes, searching for something she didn't expect to find.

"I am now," he responded, and if he was unnerved by her proximity, he did nothing to show it.

Ginny turned and ran away, back to her battalion and back to reality, but she knew that everything had changed. Her first kill wouldn't be her last.

--- ---- ---- ---- ---

Ginny had always been a passionate person, full of fire and tenacity. She had done a wonderful job of hiding it for some time - while she was under the spell of the famous Harry Potter and while she confided in the sympathetic ear of Tom Riddle - but it had always been there. She was the sort of person whose passion and intensity could be alternately attractive and off-putting. She was stubborn and resistant to ideas that weren't originally hers. She was spiteful and sometimes even downright malicious. She could lie through the skin of her teeth, put on a prize-winning performance for her audience, and yet turn around and love so wholeheartedly that it almost made her sick. She was contrary and contradictory, a walking puzzle.

She decided that that was what Draco loved about her. Although he never said those three little words, Ginny was able to recognise the emotion in him, no matter how much he tried to hide it. He loved that she was multi-faceted. She wasn't one-dimensional like Pansy had been (or at least, seemed to have been, she conceded). But he was still, and always would be, just out of reach.

She hated the way he wouldn't let her all the way in, no matter how much she persisted. He always kept himself remote, aloof; he was unattainable to everyone, despite how intimate they were. He was intangible, although physically available - she could touch the fine silk of his hair, the cool smoothness of his skin, but he would never let her see all the way into his heart.

He must have loved her brokenness because he, too, was broken. It was a secret facet of his personality that he loved broken things. He was too proud to admit it, of course, but she knew it. She knew a lot about him that no one else did. She also knew that that was why he wouldn't let her in. He was too afraid of what she already knew.

And that knowledge of him was how she knew that she would find him. She always found him when he disappeared.

Hermione said it was a singular talent, but Ginny believed that anyone would be able to find him if they would just take the time to get to know him a little.

Narcissa Malfoy was dead. She was just the latest in the never-ending series of war criminals being executed. Her case had been in the appeals process for almost a year and a half, as Draco fought in vain to keep his mother alive. Narcissa had made too many mistakes, too many careless moves, and put her trust in the wrong people (her own sister had initially sold her out, and then suddenly people were coming out of the woodwork to condemn her). And despite what Ginny had with Draco, she couldn't bring herself to feel sorry for his mother; they had all lost people that they loved.

But the lack of empathy didn't stop her from going to save him again.

--- ---- ---- ---- ---

"Did you honestly think that nothing was going to change? That we'd all just fall back into our old stereotypes and be comfortable with that?"

"Honestly? I didn't think about it at all," Draco admitted.

They lay together, sweat-soaked and entwined in her bedroom at the Burrow. The once-bustling home was now woefully empty, as most of the Weasley children had long since moved out (some never to return, not even for a visit). Molly might have been in the kitchen or out in Diagon Alley; they didn't know and Draco didn't care. He liked it best when they were alone. Ginny had sometimes wondered if it was because he was ashamed of what they had, but she now knew that it wasn't.

"That makes me laugh," she said, humourlessly. "You always seemed to care so much about what everyone thought. You've changed."

"I guess," he responded. She didn't know it, but he didn't care what people thought anymore because there weren't many people left whose opinion mattered to him.

He liked to run his fingers over her ribcage, and he seemed to delight in finding new freckles all over her body. Long, pale fingers would trace little circles around them, making her twitch and twist out - she was extremely ticklish.

Ginny sighed contentedly, as he pressed a soft kiss to her temple. "I wish things could always be this way." She didn't mean to sound wistful or inexpressibly sentimental, as she knew how off-putting it was to him, but there were times when she just couldn't help herself. She supposed she spent too much time around Fleur and Hermione and sometimes even Luna. They rubbed off on her, and shaped her post-war personality into a strange mix of who she once was and who many had always longed for her to be.

"Do you love me?" she then asked, lifting his head so their eyes could meet.

He didn't answer, and she just looked away. "All right," he said, "I'm going now."

"Tell your mother I said hello," Ginny spat bitterly.

"I will," Draco replied, casually. He was always so casual, apathetic. She loathed it and yet also relished in it. It was normal, when so many other things were not.

He dressed quickly and left Ginny alone. She took out her oboe and began to play.

--- ---- ---- ---- ---

It took her much longer to find him this time, and that worried her.

She stood over him, hands squarely on her hips, straddling the messy heap that comprised the once great personage of Draco Malfoy. She supposed that she didn't cut that imposing of a figure herself with her unkempt mane of hair which had been left unwashed for days, baggy, second-hand clothing, and to add to that, the dark circles under her eyes,, made even more prominent by her sallow skin, did not do much to inspire fear even in the most miserable wretches.

Draco managed to cast his gaze up at her, though his difficulty in focusing made it obvious that he'd been drinking copiously again for God only knew how long. "My, how the mighty have fallen," he said.

How he managed to keep his posh drawl, Ginny would never know. Even though he appeared to be about eight sheets to the wind, he could still speak properly and with the same biting arrogance that infuriated her to the bone. She found it unfair that he could still stir up a fire inside of her - especially considering that no one else could.

"You're drunk," she accused. Her eyes flashed dangerously, but he was too far gone to take note of it.

"Got it in one," he replied with a laugh, as he lifted his index finger and tapped it on the end of his pale, pointed nose.

"I'm tired of this," she said, folding her arms across her chest and staring down at him. "Draco, I am so tired of this."

"Then stop coming."

She flushed, with anger or with embarrassment, she didn't know. "You know I won't do that."

Draco laughed at her, the disdain in it stabbing her like a dull knife. "I know you won't. You want to fix me."

She knew it was true. "Why do you keep doing this? Drinking yourself into oblivion, disappearing for days at a time, why!?"

"I'm in mourning," he insisted, tossing the bottle away and pushing himself up along the wall until he was standing; he towered a whole head over her, but it was still obvious that she held the position of power.

Ginny stepped forward menacingly, fists clenched tightly. "You didn't 'mourn' when your father was killed."

"My father was a monster," Draco replied, his jaw clenched painfully as he tried to keep his supposedly expert control. "He didn't deserve to be mourned."

"This isn't mourning, Draco! You're killing yourself!" Ginny shouted. "Just because they are gone doesn't mean you have to stop living too!"

"WHAT DO I HAVE LEFT TO LIVE FOR?" he thundered. "YOU?"

Horrified, Ginny slapped him smartly across the cheek. "Fuck you!" she cursed, and then she turned on her heels and left him.

--- ---- ---- ---- ---

Ginny liked to compose songs for the people in her life and for the people who no longer were. Some were rudimentary and some were more complex, but she did her best to come up with something for everyone.

Her mother's was alternately sharp and tender. Hermione's was tense and longing, pining for something that no longer was. Luna's was nonsensical, with ups and downs and undulating twists. Lupin's was lonesome, poignant, and very, very sad.

Harry's had taken the longest to compose, and in the end, she found that she never wanted to play it for him. He wouldn't appreciate the time it took, not these days. It wasn't very long, and it was quicker than most of the other songs. It had a vague feeling of detachment, as well, but that was what she felt for Harry.

Draco had no song. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't find a tune for him. She supposed it would eventually come along, but for now, she had nothing. She never told him that he didn't have a song. Though considering it was Draco, she didn't know whether it would bother him or not.

--- ---- ---- ---- ---

Ginny followed Draco out onto the balcony reluctantly. His arrival on her doorstep that morning had made her feel all manner of things, but contrasting anger and relief were predominant - anger that he thought he could just waltz back in and relief that he was still breathing.

"I'm here to apologize to you," he said, leaning back against the railing and not even waiting for her to turn around.

"Who are you?" she spat bitterly, as she closed the balcony doors behind them. "Because you certainly are not Draco Malfoy! Oh no, Draco Malfoy doesn't apologize for anything - not even for being a worthless drunken prat who thinks he can just run around trying to kill himself because little Ginny Weasley will always be there to pick up the pieces!" She whirled around on him. "You never apologize!"

Draco shrugged, and Ginny had to bite back the many hurtful things that immediately sprang to her mind. It was another of the many things she hated about him - how he could make even the simplest gestures, like a nod or a shrug, condescending and arrogant. "It's the new millennium. We all have things for which we need to atone."

"That's crap," she responded. She marched forward and stood toe to toe with him. "You're not sorry."

He reached up and gripped her upper arms, as if he thought he could will her to believe him by sheer force. "No, I am. I'm sorry that I do this to you."

Ginny scoffed. "No, you aren't. If you really were sorry, you'd just stop. You'd stop doing this to yourself."

"Open your eyes, little Weasel!" The painful grip he had on her intensified as he struggled to make her see. "There's a whole sorry world out there. Everybody's sorry. You're sorry, your mum's sorry, Harry bleeding Potter is sorry, I AM SORRY!" He practically spat the last, brutally shoving her away and nearly toppling backwards over the rail from the momentum of it.

Ginny had to stand helplessly as he struggled to get control over himself again. He clutched at his chest, while she rubbed at the pain in her arms, willing him to breathe deeply, to be okay again.

But a part of her, a part she always struggled to keep hidden within the very depths of her heart, wanted - no, hoped - that he wouldn't. She sometimes wondered if Draco wasn't too broken to fix.

"Then stop," she said.

--- ---- ---- ---- ---

It was always easy for Ginny to confide in Hermione. She had done it ever since she had met the girl. (Of course, as illustrated by her first year at Hogwarts, it had always been easy for Ginny to confide in anyone who would listen.) And Hermione, for her part, was always full of helpful advice or even just a nudge in the right direction.

But Hermione was human, and she did make mistakes. Hermione encouraged Ginny to seek Draco out again; Hermione, Ginny often suspected, was trying to live vicariously through her.

Ginny fingered her oboe in a chair in front of the fireplace, as Hermione painstakingly knitted a scarf on the worn couch. She set aside the oboe and then spoke. "I found him kneeling in front of Nott's grave yesterday morning. He was drunk again and crying."

"So, what did you do for him?" asked Hermione, not looking up.

"You know what I did, Hermione. I did what I always do."

Hermione sighed. "What do you want me to say?"

Ginny frowned, stood up, and began to pace in front of the fire. "I don't know. I don't know how much longer I can do this."

"Then leave him," Hermione replied, matter-of-factly.

"I couldn't do that."

"You certainly could."

"No," Ginny vehemently protested, "I couldn't! No, I don't care how wrong we are for each other. I have to stay with him, Hermione. I love him."

Hermione frowned at her knitting. "I don't think that's why you stay with him, Gin." She spoke to her needles, in an oddly detached manner. "I think that it's like trying to jam two puzzle pieces together, and they don't quite fit, but they are the last two pieces in the box so you have to make them fit otherwise it means you're missing pieces and the puzzle isn't ever going to be complete."

Ginny, instantly disgusted with the words that had come out of her mouth, covered her face with her hands and threw herself into the back of armchair behind her. "When he holds me, I just want to die," she said, miserably.

"Well, at least you have someone to hold," Hermione responded.

Ginny hated the guilt more than anything, even more than the fact that Hermione was right.

--- ---- ---- ---- ---

"Play me something on that stupid thing of yours," he commanded, in a voice no higher than a whisper. The quietness almost made it sound like a lover's request, and as she lifted the oboe to her lips, Ginny tried to pretend it was.

She composed something spontaneously; it was an organic little tune, forlorn, wistful, funereal and oddly final. She realized as she played that this was his song. This was Draco's song, at long last.

She hated it.

"Stop," he said.

Ginny looked over at him, dismayed to see tears shining in his almost lifeless eyes. "What?" she asked, though she knew what.

"This isn't the end, Ginny," he replied, quietly. He lifted a delicate hand and reached out for hers. She took it, gratefully, and rested their clasped hands on his chest.

"Yes, it is," she whispered.

Draco closed his eyes.


End file.
